Abstract

An in-house polymerase chain reaction direct sequencing (PCR-DS) approach for HPV detection and typing was developed, taking advantage of two widely used pairs of human papillomavirus (HPV)-specific PCR primers, MY09/MYII and GP5/GP6, and 33P-labeled dideoxynucleotides. In this study, 105 pathological specimens were examined: 89|X% were diagnosed as cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) grade I-III, 76. 2|X% were HPV-positive by PCR-DS. The PCR using GP5/GP6 (first tier) and MY09/MY11 primers (second tier for the GP5/GP6-negative samples) detected additional 15|X%-25|X% HPV-positive samples compared with each pair used separately. Direct sequencing was then used to type the HPV. A readout of a sequence as short as 34 nucleotides within a specific region in the LI gene is sufficient to type known or novel sequences. Because of its high sensitivity and cost-effectiveness, the two-tier PCR-DS was adopted by the authors as the current method of choice for HPV diagnosis with ultimate sequence precision